


cold and broken hallelujah

by Confessions_of_a_Closet_Bibliophile



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Neil Hargrove's A+ Parenting, Non-Graphic Violence, Rating for intense subject matter, and a little language, i don't consider my writing to be detailed enough to be graphic, i think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 05:49:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21405202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Confessions_of_a_Closet_Bibliophile/pseuds/Confessions_of_a_Closet_Bibliophile
Summary: Max is curled up on the couch, steadily churning through her pre-algebra homework, when she feels it.It’s that terrible itch in her bones right before the storm hits. It’s her sixth sense for when something awful is about to happen. It’s like a thick poisonous cloud invades the house, and it sits right on her chest, right in her lungs making it hard to breathe.It starts whenever she hears Neil say “respect.”alternatively titled, Shitty Stranger Things ficlet of sadness and family problems
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	cold and broken hallelujah

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot for the life of me remember what the layout of the hargroves’ house is. So it’s just an amorphous house for the purposes of my laziness. This is set before season three, sometime during or after season two. I haven’t decided, but Max likes the Party enough that she’s gotten a walkie talkie. Unbeta'd and unedited because we die like fucking men. Proofread though, because nothing pulls me out of a scene like incorrect grammar or misspelled words. Please read the tags. I don't know how intense it'll be for anyone else, but I was shaking a little trying to write this. I'm also a wimp. So.

Max is curled up on the couch, steadily churning through her pre-algebra homework, when she feels it. 

It’s that terrible itch in her bones right before the storm hits. It’s her sixth sense for when something awful is about to happen. It’s like a thick poisonous cloud invades the house, and it sits right on her chest, right in her lungs making it hard to breathe. 

It starts whenever she hears Neil say “respect.” 

She hates that word more than any other word in the world. 

Respect. 

She already knows from that smothering sensation (she’s going to drown, but she doesn’t know the way up. Whatever is choking her isn’t something she can kick up and away from. There is no breaking the surface) that Billy’s gonna say something back. 

Max hates him too because he just _ has to _ respond. He can’t just stand there and take it. Neil is _ Billy’s _ goddamn father, and Max figured out years ago how to deal with him. 

When he gets like this, when his voice gets calm and low and his words start cutting, Max knows that he wants her to duck her head and say sorry. So that’s what she does. She carefully looks him in the eyes- so she knows that he knows she’s paying attention- then throws her gaze to the floor and doesn’t look up for anything. She apologizes, takes blame for whatever he wants her to take blame for. She cries because Neil wants to see her cry, at least when he’s this way. Maybe he thinks it means she’s really truly sorry. And yeah, okay, if Billy started crying, Neil would beat the shit out of him. But if he would just _ back down _. 

But Billy never backs down, not at first. 

Max gets that it’s hard. It’s not that she doesn’t want to defend herself when Neil says that she’s an ungrateful little brat, that she’s selfish, that she’s naive, that he regrets marrying her mother because of her. 

She can’t win though. And Max knows how to pick her battles. 

Quietly, she sets her pencil down on the side table, folds up her homework problems, and sticks them in her math book like a bookmark, just the top edge hanging out enough that she can grab it later but not so much that it’ll crease. She snatches up her book and transceiver (it was expensive, and she doesn’t trust Neil enough to leave it out where it might get broken) and walks quickly to her room, deliberately not looking at Billy’s room. 

After she sets everything down on her bed, she eases silently over to the hall closet, painstakingly twists the knob while bracing the door with her other hand so it doesn’t bang against the frame, and gets out the broom. 

This she takes back to her room. 

With smooth efficient movements, she pulls the brush off the end of the broom. 

She’d figured out one time when she was shaking the dust out of the ugly rugs that Mom bought for the foyer that it went a lot easier if she took the brush off the broom and whacked the rug with the aluminum broomstick. It made a satisfying _ whooshing _ sound when it cut through the air and came down on the rug with a loud _ crack _. 

So whenever she starts to get that suffocating feeling, she takes apart the broom and waits for the waves to break over her. 

The moment Neil raises his voice, she’s standing half in the doorway of Billy’s room. She holds the broomstick loosely but securely out of sight. (She doesn’t want to strain her hands in case she needs them later.) 

Neil hasn’t done anything. Yet.

Max watches him in quick, darting glances, but she stares mostly at the side of Billy’s head, wills him to look over so she can beg him to stop. 

_ Just stop. _

She doesn’t know what Neil’s angry at Billy for, but it’s not worth it. 

Billy doesn’t look over. Some part of Max that she isn’t going to look at until this is all over thinks that he doesn’t want to draw attention to her. That he’s protecting her as much as he can. She’ll wonder, later, not for the first time, if he does this on purpose because Neil needs to hit something and he’d rather it be himself. 

Maybe. 

It’s probably also Billy’s pride. 

Billy yells something that Max can’t hear over the buzzing sound in her head. 

In a heartbeat, Neil’s got Billy up against the wall, both hands wrapped around his throat. He’s not saying a word, not even trying to make a point. He just stares at Billy and squeezes. Max shrieks, runs in with the broomstick raised. 

“Let go of him! Stop!” 

She swings at his back, his legs, but her arms feel weak. Neil doesn’t even look in her direction. 

She changes tack, sprints to the kitchen, and grabs the cordless phone from its cradle. Dialing 9-1-1, she skids to a stop in Neil’s line of sight. 

“I’m calling the cops! Let go, or I’m calling!” 

She hits talk and hears it ring for a few, stretched out seconds.

The dispatcher picks up. “9-1-1, what is your emergency?” 

Neil lets go, steps back. 

Billy hunches into a ball, coughing and hacking. It’s awful, but he’s conscious. He’s coughing which means that he’s breathing. Max already knows that the afterimage of Neil strangling Billy will stay on the backs of her eyelids, waiting anytime she blinks. Her face is dry, somehow. She feels like she’s screaming within her chest, in her ribcage. She looks into Neil’s flat eyes and her spine shudders.

“Hello? Do you need assistance?” 

Max’s eyes don’t leave Neil, held there like magnets drawn together, as she says, “No, it’s okay now. Thank you, have a good night ma’am.” 

The answering click is deafeningly loud in the weighted silence. 

Neil’s still furious in that cold, quiet way, but Max is prepared. 

She shifts onto the balls of her feet, ready to dart away and redial if he comes for her. 

Achingly slowly, Neil turns and stalks towards the open doorway. He’s nearly out of the room entirely when, lightning fast, he plucks a bottle of cologne from the bookshelf. 

Frozen, Max feels the spray as it shatters on the wall just above her head. She flinches belatedly. 

Then he’s gone. 

Max hears the front door open and slam shut. Mom is nowhere in sight, probably hiding in their bedroom. 

It’s okay though because Max isn’t sure that she’ll be able to hold it together if Mom’s dissolving into hysterics right now. Mom can just deal with it. She’s suddenly too exhausted, legs shaky and arms leaden, to care if that’s cruel. 

She drops the phone on Billy’s desk with the mental reminder to put it back in the cradle, to reassemble the broom and sweep up the glass, to check for cuts on the back of her neck once the adrenaline wears off. 

Then it all wears off, and she’s sobbing into her hands. 

It’s one of those times where the tears come in a nearly silent scream, mouth stretched so wide she can feel the dry skin on her lips splitting. Her whole frame shakes with the effort, and she judders like the Camaro when it needs new spark plugs. She finds herself clinging to Billy, probably leaving tears and snot and trails of spit on his jean jacket. She grabs fistfuls of it, clutches him closer, presses her ear to his chest even though she still can’t hear anything. 

They stay there for an eternity, it seems. 

Max says, “I’m scared that one day he’s going to kill you.” She sniffles, chokes on globs of snot and swallows them down. “I’m scared that he’s going to kill you, and I’m going to have to watch.” 

Billy laughs in a way that means he’s not really laughing but what else can he do except cry and says, “Neil’s not going to kill me.” 

It’s such a blatant lie because he can’t know that, he can’t promise that, and it just makes Max cry harder because that’s utter shit. Neil doesn’t care about Billy, or if he does, it doesn’t fucking matter since him caring or not caring has never stopped him. And there’s nothing Max can do about it, so she just slams her face back into Billy’s chest and tries to melt into his even-tighter grip on her. 

She needs to feel him breathe. 

Then, a million years later, she’ll have to let go. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for that. I needed to read it, so I needed to write it, then I figured I might as well post it. If you or anyone you know is in a similar situation, please stay safe. <3 Virtual hugs for everyone (and yes, I'm mentally wrapping both of them up in the softest, fluffiest blankets, cuddling them, and playing with their hair).


End file.
